STANDING TALL IN A CHARMING BUT UNASSUMING WAY, his bronze statue greets the thousands of fans who pass by the paddock area on race day. From his tipped fedora to his cross-armed stance overlooking the rolling Kettle Moraine hills that host America’s first permanent road course, Clif Tufte is Road America. Sculpted by Wisconsin artist Tom Holleran and unveiled on October 9, 2020, the statue immortalizes a trailblazer whose foresight and determination transformed a quiet tourist town into an international road race mecca, thanks to Road America’s sprawling 640-acre facility just south of Elkhart Lake.
Inscribed on a nearby bench is a quote from the 1955 edition of the Chicago Region Sports Car Club of America publication Piston Patter: “Let there be no mistake, when the record of Road America is written into the history of sports car racing, one name will stand alone. Although he sought and received help from any qualified source, he and he alone had the vision, courage, and the ability to carry out the construction of a superb course. While the rest of us talked, he built. The man? Clif Tufte.”1
Tufte was a dreamer: the Walt Disney of American road courses. He built it and they came—the drivers, the car companies, the sponsors, and the fans. Today, his “Four Miles That Go Nowhere” is celebrated as one of the greatest racetracks in the world, but Tufte endured numerous twists, turns, and bumps as he made Road America into a reality.
“What an evocative name for a racetrack!” exclaimed Road America historian Tom Schultz in his book Road America: 50 Years of Road Racing. “Four miles of country road, reflective of what one would find anywhere in the scenic Kettle Moraine countryside, just inviting one to drive it, and to drive it fast.”2 Located a few miles south of the village of Elkhart Lake on Wisconsin Highway 67, Road America has hosted many of the world’s fastest cars and most talented drivers over the past sixty-six years. “Bruce McLaren, Mario [Andretti], Jackie Stewart, you name them,” recalled Bobby Rahal, winner of the 1986 Indianapolis 500 and the second of three generations of his family to race at Road America. “If you were a driver of any stature, you raced there.”3
Ever since it hosted its first official race on September 10, 1955, the original 4.048-mile, fourteen-turn configuration has been busy. Road America has evolved into a year-round venue, hosting more than five hundred events annually, including nine major race weekends in 2021. It attracts upwards of 800,000 visitors a year from every corner of the globe. Celebrities such as Walter Payton, Robert Carradine, and Tim Allen have raced competitively there. Even Hollywood’s most famous racing enthusiast, Paul Newman, filmed himself behind the wheel on the course for a major motion picture in 1968.4
It’s hard to imagine Elkhart Lake without Road America. “If Clif wouldn’t have had the vision, that place wouldn’t be there,” remarked motorsports journalist Dick Stahler. “Nobody could build that racetrack today.” Although closed circuit oval tracks had been in use for fifty years (the Milwaukee Mile, built on the grounds of the Wisconsin
